Stack of Stuff Quick Hits Page
August 7, 2009
Story #5: NYT to Claim Unemployment Problem "Decade Old"
RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, I have been advised that the New York Times planning heavy coverage for this weekend on the following story. It's being written by Floyd Norris. "In Last Decade, a Lack of Job Growth..." This the just amazing in its malpractice and irresponsibility. Listen to this now. "For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring. The accompanying charts," which I don't have here; I just have the advanced text "show the job performance from July 1999, when the economy was booming and companies were complaining about how hard it was to find workers, through July of this year, when the economy was mired in the deepest and longest recession since World War II."
So from 1999 to now, we have produced no new jobs. We've been in a decade-long jobs recession. The Bush administration never happened! They're willing -- at their near bankrupt newsroom, at the New York Times -- they are willing to put out drivel like this in order to prop up this catastrophe of a president.
You remember it was just two years ago we were at record employment at 4.7%, after coming out of a mild recession that Clinton left us with and then 9/11. We had a growing population. We had a booming economy that they tried to make everybody think was rotten, especially in the second Bush term.
Story #6: AP Admits Unemployment Rate Didn't Really Dip
RUSH: I must mention this. I finally read the full Associated Press story on the new unemployment numbers, and even the AP admits that unemployment didn't really dip. "Employers sharply scale back layoffs in July. The unemployment rate dips for the first time in 15 months, sending a strong signal, the worst recession..."
Then you go to the end of the article, buried at the bottom: "The dip in the unemployment rate was the first since April 2008. One of the reasons the rate declined, though, was that hundreds of thousands of people left the labor force. The labor force includes only those who are either employed or are looking for work." So even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. We just had a hell of a lot of people give up looking, and they're not counted as members of the labor force. That's what we now know in the BLS figures they put out, Bureau of Labor Statistics. The U6, unemployment 6...
Like 9.4% is U3 and that's people who are employed, looking for work, not employed, on unemployment benefits. U6 is everybody that's looking for work, on unemployment compensation and those who are no longer looking, they've given up, and that rate is 16%. Not 9.4. It is 16, maybe 16.9, but it's 16 something. And even AP admits unemployment didn't really dip. It just went off the charts, just went off the unemployment rolls. Well, we have been rescued. See, AP knows people aren't going to read the bottom of the story. We've been rescued from this catastrophe. The president said so today.